Tag Archives: audience

100 small business strategy questions

By Aaron Hoos on May 18, 2012 in Business

Many small businesses are fueled by passion. They start because an entrepreneur has an idea (or is sick of working for a boss), they grow because their ideas solve a problem and somehow that solution is communicated to the marketplace.

Unfortunately, many small businesses fail… even ones that are seemingly successful and make profitable sales. The reason is, they’re simply existing day-by-day, sale-by-sale, without any real strategy or long-term vision to give their existence any direction.

If you’re an entrepreneur, answer these 100 small business strategy questions. The answers will help you to highlight areas of opportunity that you can exploit and areas of concern that you can mitigate. Bookmark this page and come back to it regularly to work through these questions every 3 to 6 months.

With your answers, create a list of to-dos that you can act on until you come back to these questions again. [Note: Since publishing this list, I have written individual posts about some of these strategy questions so I've updated this list with the links to those other posts.]

  1. What does your business do?
  2. What does your business sell?
  3. What does your business stand for?
  4. What parts of your brand truly reflect your current business?
  5. What parts of your brand do not (or no longer) reflect your current business?
  6. What are the top 10 benefits your business provides?
  7. Who is your perfect customer?
  8. How are you adding value?
  9. What are your products’ or services’ biggest flaws?
  10. How do you define a lead?
  11. Where are your leads coming from?
  12. What demographic are your leads?
  13. How are you creating leads?
  14. How are your competitors creating leads?
  15. How will lead creation change for your industry in the future?
  16. How do you define a prospect?
  17. What is your lead-to-prospect ratio?
  18. What demographic are your prospects?
  19. How is your prospect demographic different from your leads demographic?
  20. How are you turning leads into prospects?
  21. How are your competitors turning leads into prospects?
  22. What objections do your prospects have?
  23. What objections do you NOT have an answer for?
  24. How do you define a customer?
  25. What is your prospect-to-customer ratio (close rate)?
  26. What demographic are your customers?
  27. How is your customer demographic different from your prospect demographic?
  28. How are you converting prospects into customers?
  29. How are your competitors converting prospects into customers?
  30. What has caused you to lose a sale?
  31. How do you define an evangelist?
  32. What is your customer-to-evangelist ratio?
  33. What is your evangelist demographic?
  34. How is your evangelist demographic different from your customer demographic?
  35. How is your relationship with your customers?
  36. What were your 3 most successful marketing campaigns?
  37. What were your 3 least successful marketing campaigns?
  38. What marketing and sales activities are you using in each stage of your sales funnel?
  39. How do you measure company-wide success?
  40. How do you measure personal and/or employee success?
  41. How are you improving your relationship with your customers?
  42. How can you improve the process for receiving and acting on feedback from customers?
  43. How are you encouraging repeat sales?
  44. How are you encouraging upsells?
  45. Who else can use your products or services that you aren’t currently serving?
  46. What is your business model?
  47. What other peer-businesses use the same business model?
  48. What can you learn from peer-businesses that use the same business model?
  49. What other businesses (in other industries) use a similar business model?
  50. What can you learn from businesses in other industries that use a similar business model?
  51. Who are your top 3 competitors?
  52. Who/what are your indirect competitors?
  53. What does the most successful businesses in your industry do that you don’t do yet?
  54. Why would someone buy from you instead of your competition?
  55. When should someone buy from your competition instead of you?
  56. What are your competitors doing differently?
  57. What are your competitors doing better than you?
  58. What are your competitors doing worse than you?
  59. How are your relationships with your suppliers/vendors?
  60. How can your supplier/vendor relationships be improved?
  61. What does your organizational chart look like and what strengths/weaknesses are the result?
  62. What are the next 3 roles you need to hire for?
  63. What was the last thing you tested in your business?
  64. When was the last time you tested a price change and what were the results?
  65. What political changes do you see affecting your business/industry?
  66. What economic changes do you see affecting your business/industry?
  67. What social changes do you see affecting your business/industry?
  68. What technological changes do you see affecting your business/industry?
  69. What financial best practices have you implemented?
  70. How have buying habits changed in your industry?
  71. What trends are influencing buying habits?
  72. How will buying habits change in the future?
  73. How has your industry innovated in the past decade?
  74. How has your business innovated in the past year?
  75. Where does your business plan to innovate this coming year?
  76. How are you investing in your business’ growth (i.e. innovation, new equipment, etc.)?
  77. What is your plan to scale up your business?
  78. If you had to get rid of 90% of your customers, what 10% would you keep?
  79. If you kept 10% of your most profitable customers, what would that demographic look like?
  80. How can you increase your ideal customer base?
  81. How can you decrease your less-than-ideal customer base?
  82. Where are people talking about your business online?
  83. What are people saying about your business online?
  84. What is your plan if your industry suddenly received a lot of bad press?
  85. What is your plan if your business suddenly received a lot of bad press?
  86. What is your plan if your marketing went viral and you suddenly had 10x the customers?
  87. What contingency plans do you a have in place for natural disasters?
  88. What would happen to your business if you were unable to work?
  89. What has changed about your business since you started?
  90. How has your income trended since you started?
  91. How has your profit margin trended since you started?
  92. What plans do you have to increase income next year?
  93. What plans do you have to increase profits next year?
  94. Where do you see your business in 1 year?
  95. Where do you see your business in 5 years?
  96. Where do you see your business in 10 years?
  97. What strengths/assets can you leverage for growth?
  98. Where are your blindspots?
  99. What are the top 3 problems keeping you from advancing to the next level in business?
  100. What about your business, industry, or customers keeps you awake at night?

What Hollywood can teach you about creating a successful sales funnel

By Aaron Hoos on May 20, 2011 in Business

I’m looking forward to two movies this summer — The Hangover Part II and Pirates of the Caribbean – On Stranger Tides. (Feel free to draw your own conclusions about me based on that confession). Although I PVR everything and tend to fast forward through the commercials, I’ll usually stop fast forwarding and play previews for these movies.

These two movies (and movies like them), my wife and I call them “theater movies” because we’ll happily go and pay to watch them in the theater (as opposed to “renters” that we’ll watch on Netflix).

Hollywood, of course, wants lots of theater-goers and so, as summer approaches, we are all being drawn in to Hollywood’s sales funnels.

Yes, Hollywood has sales funnels. Every business has a sales funnel and the studios that make movies each have their own sales funnels.

This “Hollywood sales funnel” works well (hey, many of them make a ton of money) and it can teach business owners a thing or two about how to create a successful sales funnel.

THE HOLLYWOOD SALES FUNNEL

The Hollywood sales funnel goes something like this:

The Audience stage: You and I are sitting there, on the couch, eating Doritos and watching the latest episode of The Chicago Code or Grey’s Anatomy. We’re drawn into the story. Clearly, we want to be entertained (or, at the very least, we have nothing better to do), which makes us the perfect candidate for… commercials! Including a movie trailer.

A movie trailer is a teaser. A movie trailer tends to follow a classic format and its ultimate purpose is to capture our attention and make us want more! It’s meant to win over audiences that aren’t paying attention or even thinking about the summer right now. It’s meant to force us to ask questions and wonder how the hero/heroine got themselves into this predicament and how they’ll get out of it.

What’s noticeable is that it isn’t meant to tell the whole story. Only just enough to capture our interest. For people who don’t like movies about hangovers or pirates, then trailers for The Hangover Part II and Pirates of the Caribbean – On Stranger Tides aren’t going to capture their attention. But for people who can relate (because they’ve had hangovers) or for people who aspire (to be pirates or at least to a life of vicarious adventure), these trailers will capture their attention. (Note: Just in case it’s not obvious, this is the case for every trailer. People might relate to an underdog and want to watch a movie where an unlikely hero is drawn into threatening circumstances; or people might aspire to true love and want to watch a movie where a boy meets a girl then loses the girl then woos her and they live happily ever after).

Movie trailers act as a “sorting mechanism”, enticing Audience members who are likely to become customers while being ignored by those who won’t likely become customers.

The Lead stage: We’ve just seen a trailer for a movie that seemed interesting. We pause to think about it. We ask the questions (“how did the hero get in that situation?”). We think ahead to the summer. That’s all that Hollywood wants us to do at this stage in the sales funnel. Just think a little further about the movie. Not much, just a bit. We turn to the person sitting on the couch and we say something like “that might be interesting to watch” or “I’d love to see Ian McShane as Blackbeard”.

From time to time, we see branded messages that triggers the same feelings of relation or aspiration: Maybe it’s a billboard of the movie or a newspaper ad that says “in theaters soon” or we see the trailer again or we visit the website or we hear a review or we spot the movie poster. Whatever.

Although the message is very similar to the message presented in the Audience stage, it allows us to go deeper. We see new trailers or we think about the old trailers a little more. We catch nuances we missed the first time. We ask new questions. We’re presented with the message over and over. That message is: “I want to see this movie because [whatever].”

Then…

The Prospect stage:It’s a summer weekend. It’s humid. We’ve worked all week and deserve a break. We’re wondering what to do on a Friday night. One person says “how about dinner and a movie?”

Dinner’s the easy part. Someone suggests a favorite restaurant and no one disagrees. But a movie — you check the listings and, what do you know, YOUR movie is playing! The one you’ve been thinking about. The one that looked really good. It’s settled then.

The Customer stage: You drive to the theater. You buy tickets and popcorn and soda and licorice… and you love the movie.

The Evangelist stage: The movie is awesome. So awesome, in fact, that you want to immediately tell your friends. After all, they love hangovers and pirates just as much as you do, so the thinking is: If you liked it, they will love it. You call, text, blog, tweet, or somehow share your excitement about the movie to your friends and they go to the theater the next week and watch.

And THAT is the Hollywood sales funnel.

WHAT THE HOLLYWOOD SALES FUNNEL CAN TEACH YOU

This sales funnel works. Studios and actors make billions of dollars a year because of this sales funnel. Here’s what your business can learn from the Hollywood sales funnel.

The Audience stage is about finding the right audience — a target market who is in a receptive state — and tease them. Give them something to think about/talk about/question. It could be a headline or a compelling AdWords ad. It could be a strange graphic or a controversial tweet. Something that captures your Audience’s attention and makes them want more.

The Lead stage is about presenting a consistent branded message again and again that helps your Lead go deeper. It’s still enticing them (like the Audience stage did), but it gives some answers and raises more questions. Ultimately, the Lead should be left wondering “this sounds interesting… I want to know more.”

The Prospect stage is about finding the intersection between the contact’s need (“I want to watch that movie” or “I want to warm my food” or “I need a reliable car”) and the opportunity to buy (“It’s Friday and the movie is in the theater!” or “here’s a microwave and it happens to be on sale!” or “with financing, I can buy a red one!”).

That’s when they become a Customer.

The Customer stage is fulfilling on the promise. Some businesses stop there but smart businesses fulfill on the promise made in such a way that the Customer feels they received value and it compels them to move on to…

The Evangelist stage. This is where the Evangelist is so excited about your product or service that they call, text, blog, tweet, or somehow share their excitement about your product or service with their friends… and then those friends buy the same thing.

Hollywood’s movies are great moments of excitement and entertainment and escape. But their sales funnels are based on years of successful strategy and measurement and they work. As you develop your sales funnel, ask yourself this: “If my business were a movie, would this part of my sales funnel entice the sales funnel contact to want to come to the theater and pay to watch?“

Just read: “How to Hook a Prospect? Check its Job Ads” at WSJ.com

By Aaron Hoos on May 15, 2011 in Business

Researching a company before accepting them as clients is an important lesson I wish I knew earlier in my business. Only the past 5 years or so have I really started to investigate a potential Customer first to make sure that they’re the right fit.

Researching businesses for this kind of information isn’t always easy — they’re busy promoting themselves to their Prospects, which means you have to dig deeper to find what your potential Customer is all about.

Mike Michalowicz offers a clever way to do some preliminary research for Prospects. The answer is in the title but you should really read the whole article.

How to Hook a Prospect? Check Its Job Ads – WSJ.com.

After you’ve read the article, take a look at your list of Prospects then go hunting for their job ads. Check out sites like Monster.com and don’t forget about freelance sites, too.

Once you’ve found some info, integrate it into your sales presentations. (Michalowicz tells you how to do that). And you can even go beyond your Prospect list and do the same task for all of the stages in your sales funnel.

The same information in job ads can help you move sales funnel contacts at each stage: Your Audience member job ads can help you refine your message to capture their attention more effectively and turn them into Leads. Your Leads’ job ads can help you position yourself as the solution to their problem or need so you can turn them into Prospects. Your Prospects’ job ads can help you overcome objections and drive home key sales-making points to convert them into Customers. Your Customers’ job ads can help you identify new opportunities to provide service so they can become Evangelists.

Just what is a lead? How to know if you can make money from this sales funnel contact

By Aaron Hoos on May 3, 2011 in Business

As contacts move through your sales funnel, you nurture a relationship with them. The engagement that comes from that relationship elicits more and more information to help you know whether or not this contact is likely to buy from you.

As the relationship builds, the contact moves out of the Audience stage, where they were simply listening to general ideas about the problem or need they have, and they advance to the Lead stage, where they start taking action to pursue a solution.

But what exactly is a Lead? Is it a name? Is it an email address? Is it a telephone number? Is it an affirmation that they are interested in what you have to sell?

I believe that a Lead is a sales funnel contact who has realized just how acute their problem or need is and is starting to search out a solution. They’re willing to exchange a little bit of information about themselves in order to see if you could be one of the potential solution-providers to meet their needs. But what information you collect from them depends on your business.

I recently read an article that was published back in December 2009 (but the good stuff is always timeless!). In the article, Eric Rudolf proposes the difference between “a name”, “a lead”, and “an opportunity”. His article nicely bridges the gap that the marketing department and sales department often try to communicate over.

Summarizing what Rudolf says…

  • A name is just a name with no context.
  • A Lead is a name and contact information of someone within a target market who has expressed interest in learning more.
  • An opportunity is a name and contact information of someone within a target market who has expressed interest in learning more, and has a budget, and is an decision-maker.

Those are pretty good definitions. And if I were to look at those and then compare them to how we understand sales funnels, I would suggest that a name is a contact from your Audience stage, a Lead is a contact from your Leads stage, and an opportunity is a contact from your Prospect stage. And this matches with what Rudolf is saying — an opportunity is the warmest and most likely to buy.

So what should you do? It doesn’t matter whether you work alone or have a big marketing department and sales department. You (and/or your team) need to get names in the Audience stage and then nurture the relationship into a Lead. Then, nurture the relationship into a Prospect. Once you’re there, the contact is ready to be sold.

Read Eric Rudolf’s article Is it a Lead or not? A marketer’s guide to communicating with sales.

Weekly Sales Funnel Challenge: Draw your sales funnel (again)

By Aaron Hoos on April 18, 2011 in Business

The Weekly Sales Funnel Challenge is a week-long challenge for business owners to focus on a specific aspect of their sales funnel for one week. It’s a fun way to keep you focused on one of the most important parts of your business. A new Weekly Sales Funnel Challenge is published every Monday and a wrap-up post is published every Friday.
Weekly Sales Funnel Challenge

I’ve had a lot of new readers since I started doing these Weekly Sales Funnel Challenges, so I thought it was time to repeat one of the very first challenges: Draw your sales funnel.

List each stage (Audience, Leads, Prospects, Customers, Evangelists), and outline what your contacts do at each stage and how you communicate with them. It doesn’t have to be perfect. The goal is to write down what you do know and to see what you don’t know… and then build from there.

Even if you’ve already drawn your sales funnel in a previous challenge, I challenge you to do it again. If you’ve been one of the faithful Weekly Sales Funnel Challenge participants, it will be an interesting experiment to go back compare your current sales funnel drawing with your first one. How have you progressed in the months between those drawings?

Weekly Sales Funnel Challenge: Search Engine Optimization

By Aaron Hoos on March 21, 2011 in Business

The Weekly Sales Funnel Challenge is a week-long challenge for business owners to focus on a specific aspect of their sales funnel for one week. It’s a fun way to keep you focused on one of the most important parts of your business. A new Weekly Sales Funnel Challenge is published every Monday and a wrap-up post is published every Friday.
Weekly Sales Funnel Challenge

Your Audience and your Leads use search engines to find information and solutions about the problems they face or the needs they have.

Are you showing up in the right places?

Think about what your Audience and Leads are searching for. Are the keywords you’re building your website around the same keywords your Audience and Leads are using?

I’ve seen some businesses with websites built around keywords for their Prospects. The problem is, their Prospects aren’t the ones searching on the web. It’s the Audience and Leads that are searching.

So review who your contacts are at each stage of your sales funnel and think about how they are using search engines. Then target your SEO marketing around those keywords.

Steps in the Audience stage of your sales funnel: What are your contacts thinking about?

By Aaron Hoos on March 19, 2011 in Business

Yesterday I wrote a blog post about the steps within each stage of your sales funnel. Basically, your sales funnel is made up of stages and each stage is made up of steps.

Those steps are defined by a combination of factors, including your industry, your business, your competition, and your marketplace. The easiest way to figure out what steps your sales funnel contacts will take in each stage of your sales funnel is to think about how their thought process transitions throughout the relationship they have with you.

Below, I’ve written out an example of the thoughts your sales funnel contact has in the Audience stage. Your contacts start at the beginning and slowly transition through to the end, where they ideally enter the Leads stage. Each of these bullet points is a distinct thought, and the best way to move your Audience member through the Audience stage is to help them move from one thought to another.

So, they start off as a Pre-Audience member and they are…

  • Oblivious to your existence

And then they slowly start to become aware of you and become an Audience member. (Their thoughts, below, are written from their perspective)…

  • Something isn’t the way I want it to be
  • I’d like it to be different
  • Here’s what I’d like to be different
  • Here’s how I’d like it to be different
  • I wonder how to achieve that difference
  • Here are some people who (generally) makes that difference
  • They have something to say about what I want to be different.
  • They have something valuable to say about what I want to be different.
  • They have something valuable to say on a regular basis about what I want to be different.
  • Of this group, there is a shortlist of people who have something remarkably and consistently valuable to say about what I want to be different.
  • They have something valuable to say that’s applicable to me.
  • I’m going to try to apply some of the valuable ideas they’ve shared.
  • Their ideas work.
  • This general information is really good, I wonder if they have more to say.

Next, they perform some triggering action to advance to the Lead stage.

HERE’S WHAT YOU SHOULD DO ABOUT THIS

  1. Figure out the thought-journey that your Audience contacts take. Break it down into smaller steps (although you can later combine steps but it’s helpful to understand the steps individually at first).
  2. Identify messages that will resonate with your Audience at each thought-step. What can you say that will help to move them to the next thought-step?
  3. Identify places (websites, social media sites, forums, etc.) where you can say the messages you’ve just written.
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